Emergent Literacy Design
Rationale: For children to learn to read and spell words, they need the alphabetic insight that letters stand for phonemes and spellings map out the phonemes in spoken words. Before children can match letters to phonemes, they have to recognize phonemes. In this lesson, children will learn the /b/ phoneme. By learning a meaningful representation, children will recognize /b/ in spoken words, and then they will practice finding /b/ in written words.
Procedure:
1. Explain to
children that writing is a secret
code. In our code the letters map out
certain
sounds that we say when we see those letters.
The tricky part to this is learning what the letters stand for. In class today, we are going to work on the
letter b and the sound it makes /b/.
When we are done you will find /b/ in all kinds of words.
2. “Have you
ever played basketball and dribbled
the ball against the ground? The sound
it makes sounds sort of like b-b-b-b.”
Dribble the ball against the floor for the students. Pass the balls to each group and ask them to
dribble the ball. “Do you hear the
b-b-b-b sound?” Say the phoneme sound
/b/. Ask the students, “How does it feel
to say /b/? When we say /b/ our lips
push together and let out a puff of air.
A word that has the /b/ sound is the word ‘box.’
Stretch the /b/ sound so you can hear the /b/
dribble in ‘box.’ B-b-b-b-box.”
3. “Now let’s
try our tounge twister on the
chart. I’m going to say it once for you
and then I want you to say it two more times with me.
Billy bounces basketballs with brown
bear. Repeat twice with group. Great
Job! Now lets say the tongue twister one
more time and sound out those dribbling b’s each time it begins a word. Bbbbbilly bbbbounces bbbbasketballs with
bbbbrown bbbbear. Good!
This time let’s separate the /b/ from the
beginning of each word that begins with /b/.
/b/ illy /b/ ounces /b/ asketballs with /b/ rown /b/ ear.”
4. “Take out your pencils and primary paper. Now that we’ve learned what the letter B sounds like, we are going to write the letter on our paper. Demonstrate on the board and talk the students through the steps. To write the uppercase B we start at the rooftop and draw straight down to the sidewalk, around for his big chest, and around for his big tummy. For lowercase b, start at the roof, go down, b-b-bounce up and around. Once everyone has drawn your Bb, I am going to come around and see and put a sticker on your paper. Once I put a sticker on your paper, I want you to write Bb across the next few lines 6 more times.”
5. “Listen for
/b/ in the words that I am going
to call out. Tell me which word has the
/b/ in it. For example, when I say gab and rat, I hear /b/ in gab.
Do you hear /b/ in ball or
call? Fat or bat? cab or cat? Now I
want you to clap to show me when you hear /b/ in a word I say or see
the mouth
move /b/. I am going to say each word
slowly and pause. If you heard /b/ in
the word, I want you to clap twice, if you don’t hear /b/, I want you
to leave
your hands on your desk. Barry
the bumblebee bakes cakes for Brad’s
birthday party.
6. Now, have
students sing a song to the tune of
Skip to my Lou My Darling. "We are going to sing a song to the tune of
Skip to my Lou My Darling. It sounds like this. Who has a word that
starts with
/b/? Starts, starts, starts with /b/? Who has a word that starts with
/b/? Skip
to my Lou, my darling!” Sing the song
one more time to make sure the students have caught on and tell them to
raise
their hands if they can answer the question in the song.
Pick students and finish the song like
this: “Bat is a word that
starts with /b/.
Starts, starts, starts with /b/. Bat
is a word that starts with /b/. Skip to my Lou, my darling!” Take some more answers and sing the rest of
the songs with the new answers, then change the game up a little by
changing
the song. “Who has a word that ends
with /b/? Ends, ends, ends with /b/. Who has a word that ends with /b/?
Skip to
my Lou, my darling!” Call on students to answer, and finish the song.
7. Read Beast
Feast by Douglas Florian with the class. Talk
about the story with the students. Read
the story again, and have students put their hands on their b-b-bellies
when
they hear a word with /b/. List the
words on the board. Have the students
write a message about what they would feed a beast.
Encourage them to draw a picture and use
invented spellings.
8. To assess the
children’s knowledge of /b/,
give them the picture page and ask them to circle the pictures that
begin with
/b/ with their crayon. Tell them to write
a b above each picture that they
circled. You can also refer back to
their letter writing in #4 and their clapping responses in #5. If children are still having problems with
/b/ and writing the letter Bb, then they can be given extra instruction.
References:
Eldredge,
J. Lloyd. Teaching Decoding: Why and How. 2nd ed.
Prentice-Hall, Inc. 2005. pp.65-71
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/illum/grizzleel.html
Murray,
Dr. Bruce. Teaching Letter Recognition.
http://www.auburn.edu/rdggenie/letters.html